Sunday, December 24, 2006

We didn’t get along very well when we were growing up - - mostly because I was selfish and greedy for my parent’s attention and pushed the sibling rivalry thing much too far.I was the first born child and I learned early and well how to gain their approval and attention.

My parents met acting in a neighborhood theater and shared a love for the performing arts.

Both avid readers, they also shared a love of books.

I liked what they liked.

I performed well academically and on stage.

My brother was different.

He was never particularly interested in school and was always a bit shy.As I reflect on who he was then, and who he has become, I recognize that he was always a builder, an artist and a dreamer.

He was motivated by creating things and excelled in woodshop.

He loved to tear things apart to see how they worked (including my beloved panda-shaped transistor radio which he smashed to bits with a hammer just to see the inside.)

He would rock himself back and forth to music for hours and hours, thinking his own thoughts.

Until he was big enough to fight back, I sat on him, pinned his arms to his sides and ridiculed him.

I remember saying awful things to him.

Finally one day he chased me around the house with a baseball bat. I escaped into my room and slammed the door in his face and my brother smacked a hole through it with the bat.

I didn’t mess with him in a physical way after that.

In high school, I was an over-achieving academic and drama club geek. He briefly played football and then vanished into the shadows at the back of the school with the “burn-outs” and let his inky black locks grow down his back.

I’m sure he didn’t feel like he fit in at high school any more than I did.

Today, my brother owns a business framing houses in an affluent community between New York and Philadelphia.

He lives in a house he built himself with his two sons and his wife who is pregnant with their baby girl due in five days.

His black hair is now flecked with silver and his hands are giant, calloused paws.

He still doesn’t like to read much.

He’d rather watch an Eagles game.

You might meet him having a few beers after work, shooting darts with his buddies and smoking a Marlboro Red.

His limbs would likely be sore from the physical demands of his job and, if you talked with him long enough, he might tell you how he doesn’t want his own children to follow him in his line of work because he feels like it takes too great a toll on his body.

If you met my brother, he would seem tough and rugged at first.

You would have to really get to know him to understand that though he has a tough veneer, he is actually quite sentimental and the most loyal friend you could ever find.

After I went away to a midwestern college, my parents moved from Illinois to Pennsylvania.

I didn’t know anyone there and when I came home for the holidays my brother was my only companion.

Luckily, college had taught me to appreciate… certain recreational activities that he enjoyed… and Led Zeppelin too.

It was during these times, my visits home from college, that my brother and I got to know each other and learned how to be friends. I began to appreciate my brother and to regret the years I wasted antagonizing him.

I remember one of the last Christmas holidays I spent at my parent's house and specifically how I spent that Christmas Eve with my brother.

My brother had been working on his first construction job and the contractor had given him a bottle of vodka as a Christmas bonus.

As pathetic a “bonus” as it was, we weren’t about to let it go to waste and we snuck off to his room.

I guess my brother must have wanted to drink the vodka cold because he tied a string around the bottle neck, opened the bedroom window and hung the vodka outside in the winter cold.

Meanwhile, we drank beer that had already chilled on his other windowsill.

Oh, the drunken brother and sister...

At some point we decided it would be a good idea to dress up in costumes.

As I recall, my brother put on an afro wig in rainbow colors and the rest of a clown get up. I think I ended up dressed as some kind of hippie throwback, dead-show stalking, fabulous fury freak brother.

We danced around his room in our wild outfits and at exactly the moment when we really should’ve STOPPED drinking, remembered the vodka hanging out the window.

My brother threw the window open, but fumbled catching the string and his bottled Christmas bonus fell from his second story bedroom window and exploded into a million shards of glass on the icy steps leading to the front door of my parent’s house. Not a drop of it had been tasted.

As our speech and motion slowed, we started looking at old family photo albums.

Tears came to my brother’s eyes.

I asked him what was wrong and he said, “Nothing will ever be the same again. These times are gone and they will never come back to us.”

I remember being surprised by his thoughts, but he was right.

That was probably one of the last times my family spent Christmas together.

I became serious with a boyfriend; my parents divorced… things changed. Nothing ever was the same again.

My brother somehow recognized or knew that we were at a crossroads, a point in our lives where our paths would diverge.

Though our separate paths would lead each of us to our futures – our spouses, our own children, and our "grown up" lives, he and I would never live under the same roof again.

“Immediate family” would come to be defined differently. It would refer to other people.

We both ended up passed out in his room that night.

In the morning, my young cousins waited anxiously for the family to rise, for Christmas to start, for Santa’s bounty to be revealed.

For some reason, my Mother opened the front door and discovered the broken vodka bottle.

She assumed the worst.

She marched upstairs and threw open my brother’s bedroom door only to find her children, one dressed as a clown with a rainbow afro and one dressed vaguely as an acid trip, passed out willy nilly on the bed.

Her face twisted in anger and in the shrillest of tones she yelled, “YOU’VE RUINED CHRISTMAS!!!!!”

As the child most likely to routinely call home from many states away to ask for money, I roused myself and got my “cheer” on.

I think my brother stayed in bed for awhile longer.

I don’t think my mother has ever forgiven us for that night, but that is counter balanced by the importance of the evening for my brother and I.

It represents the moment in time when we were the closest we had ever been to one another and it was right at the very end, right at the last minute of our childhoods.

To this day, my brother can screw up his face and yell, “YOU’VE RUINED CHRISTMAS!!!!!” and get a laugh out of me every time.

Tonight he is far away from here.

He is most likely putting complicated toys together for his boys and hoping his wife doesn’t go into labor early.

Friday, December 22, 2006

This morning, The Mayor went to his bookshelf and chose a few books. Then he yelled, "POOPY COMING!!!" and ran to the bathroom, books in hand.

Once properly throned, he opened a book and began to "read" to himself.

A calm, happiness shrouded him.

The thing is, The Mayor sat there for twenty minutes during the household morning rush hour.

I had to "hold it" while he leisured on the loo.

K was so proud.

Proof that The Mayor, at two and a half, is on his way to being a MAN.

"Get the camera!" K yelled. "We should document this!"But I just have to ask, why do men go into the bathroom way before they are actually prepared to... move something? I have never known a woman to say, "I've got to UNBURDEN myself honey, have you seen the sports pages? "Women head in ready for action.

If they realize that... well ... things are stuck...or whatever... they pack up the equipment and come back later...

...or MAYBE pick at my their cuticles...

...or snoop in my their hosts cabinet of toiletries... (oooooh, Tucks Medicated!!!)I fetched the camera and documented The Mayors progress to true manhood, but I don't know what is worse...

K suggesting that I photograph The Mayor in action or me posting the incriminating photo to the internet.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

I'm the kind of domestic under achiever who believes that an item of clothing must be able to survive unscathed through a cold wash cycle with other items of any and all colors in order to qualify as WORTHY of this family.

Consequently, everyone at House of Joy has a lot of pink clothes.

I'm not so good at the folding either.

I would describe my folding technique as "neatly balling."

I'm willing to declare total personal defeat by the Fitted Sheet Army. If the life of a family member depended on me properly folding a fitted sheet they would be long dead by now.

The clean laundry basket is routinely filled with inappropriate relationships.

Dinner napkins become attached to bib velcro.

Socks hide in pant legs...

Sometimes when I get dressed I fail to notice that an item of clothing is hiding in my pants.

Which is why, one day at the office, a male co-worker walking behind me (and a HUGE HERD of other co-workers) said, "Hey Jessica, you dropped something."

I turned to look.

The herd of other co-workers all turned to look.

He bent down, picked up what I had dropped and extended his hand out to me.

Only then did he actually look at the item.

And then he screamed.

He made sort of an "AGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" sound and his face twisted in horror.

A pair of black lace panties dangled from his finger tips.

He held them for a few seconds before releasing them and letting them fall back down to the floor.

So... do the panties need washing again or are they technically still clean?

I put on every shade of lipstick that I own and wiped each one off in turn, so that in the end, I had the sort of cake-y, orange-ish-red lips you would find on Bozo the Clown.

As it turns out, Blog Antagonistis a laid back, friendly person who did not chastise me even once for both looking AND acting like Bozo.

It was a luxury to spend time with her.Every time I bring up the subject of blogging at home, K smiles, nods and listens, but I think he would secretly like to scream, "Shut up about blogging already, woman!"

Monday, December 18, 2006

First, because you are sick near death with The Plague, forget to give your husband his presents in the morning.

Though you have asked him to take the morning off for "Birthday Morning Delight," roll your eyes at him and say, "You can just forget about THAT, Mister." (Then blow your nose heartily.)

Scoff at the "Surprise!" fancy underwear you purchased for the occasion.

Reluctantly agree to bring the children to meet him at his office bowling party that afternoon.

Violate all that you know is right and good in the world by entering a bowling alley.

Spend 45 minutes in the car trying to get home from the bowling alley at rush hour with un-fed toddlers.When you finally arrive home, remember that you have forgotten to plan, shop for or otherwise prepare anything resembling an actual birthday dinner.

Recognize the near melt-down status of the children and rush to prepare a standard meal.

While your husband attempts to bathe the nearly over-the-edge offspring, slice the tip of your thumb almost entirely off.

Yell things like, "G*D D*MN!!" and "M*THER F*CKER!!!"

(It wouldn't be a special day at House of Joy without a stab wound.)Visit the husband in the bathroom so he can dress the wound while the children use the distraction to put soap in each other's eyes.

Notice that the "here's soap in your eye" experiment is not going well.

Decide not to care.Return to the kitchen with a giant, bandaged and throbbing thumb.

Watch the bandage become increasingly blood-soaked.

Abandon cooking plan.

Take chili left-overs out of the freezer and throw the entire mass, Ziplock bag and all, into a pan.

Decide that adding frozen peas to the chili will cover the required green vegetable needs of the family.

While pulling the peas from the freezer and turning towards the stove, fail to realize that the bag has a hole in it.

Listen to the pitter patter of frozen peas spewing across the kitchen floor and into the next room.

Cut up random items for the children's dinner (that you know they won't eat.)Try, once again, to find The Zen Way, the path to happily throwing food away, little by little, night after night, in tiny, cut-up pieces.

Friday, December 15, 2006

We were given a Babar book as a baby shower gift for The Mayor but we only read it for the first time the other night.

The first page introduces little baby Babar. The wee elephant is busy loving life, frolicking happily around with his wonderful Mom......and on page two...

Babar's mother is SHOT AND KILLED BY A HUNTER!

KABLAMMO!

Don't even get me started about how the orphaned Babar flees the jungle in fear only to be rescued by a civilized old white lady who teaches him to un-heathenize himself through sartorial elegance.

Babar grows up to be the number one pawn of THE MAN and so he is made King of the elephants.

Only an elephant that dresses and acts like whitey can be King, right?

Heathen elephants without clothes wouldn't know the first thing about how to govern themselves to be sure.

It's subversive material, I'm telling you!

But back to the early and violent death of Babar's mother...

Before K or I could recover, cover-up or otherwise divert and distract, The Mayor was fretting over what happened to the mommy elephant.

He worried his way through the rest of the book and into the next few days.

"Where is Babar's Mommy? What happened to her? Why would the hunter hurt her?"

Awful.

The Mayor is only two and a half years old.

What kind of idiot was Jean de Brunhoff the author?

Piece of mother elephant killing, neocolonialist scum.

It's not that I believe I can protect my children from the reality of human cruelty forever, but I do think I should be able to do so until... oh, I don't know - their THIRD birthday?! Is that asking too much?

It got me thinking about my childhood, remembering how I learned that people were capable of cruelty.

I used to regularly sleep over at my next door neighbor's house.

Kimmy and I were great friends... though I did once, when angry, konk her on the head with a crab mallet at the property line between our yards. (We lived in Maryland and "Maryland is for Crabs!")

I was sleeping over at Kimmy's house the night the movie "Jesus of Nazareth" was on TV for the first time.

I didn't grow up going to church so I wasn't familiar with the Bible story.

I vividly remember watching right up until Jesus wore the crown of thorns and carried the cross to the crucifixion.

I panicked.

I told Kimmy's mom I didn't feel well and needed to go home.

I ran across our adjoining yards, into my house, down the stairs and into my parent's bedroom.

I buried my head in my mother's lap and sobbed.

I'm sure she must have been taken by surprise. She stroked my hair and asked me what was wrong. I blubbered about what a nice man The Jesus Guy was and wailed about The Mean People hurting him.

I was probably nine years old.

I cried and cried.

My mom suggested that we watch the end of the movie together. She thought it would help if I saw the ending, the resurrection.

I suppose it did help, to an extent, but it didn't erase my new understanding of our human potential for unfathomable cruelty.

What possible motivation could anyone have had for such evil? I couldn't get my head around it. I could barely believe it was real.

Not too long after that, I watched the movie "Holocaust" with a baby sitter when my parents were out.

It was my introduction to that page of our human history.

Again I was devastated, my heart broken anew.

It happened again when I understood that Isaac, the African-American hired hand on my great grandmother's rural Virginian farm, wasn't allowed in the house because of his skin color...

In truth, every single day of the year the news is filled with examples of it.

Despite the constant hammering of awful, evil news, I somehow remain a trusting person with great faith in human goodness.

So I want my children to be filled with the same faith, hope, love and compassion.

I want them to believe that good will triumph over evil in the long run.

Because I know that they will have their hearts broken again and again, just as I did and still do, I don't need any help exposing them to the cruel ways of the world.

From now on, all books that kill mommy elephantsare banned from story time... along with all books that justify colonialism and glorify the bringing of "western civilization" to the jungle... and any books in general that were written by French fucktards in 1931.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

At a "New Moms" group meeting I attended before The Mayor was born, a woman who had just given birth reported that she was experiencing "menopause-like symptoms" in the Yipee Yahoo Region.

She made it clear to those of us still in the birth queue that we needed to invest in oil...(Black Gold! Texas Tea!)

... and not the Texas kind. She raved about a sexual lubricant called "Pjur Aqua Waterbased" that she swore would counter the Sahara Effect soon to be visited upon our Southern Hemispheres.

But my problem with lube is that you need to apply lube.

Which means you have to get lube on your hand.

Then you have a greasy hand.

What are you supposed to do with that hand?

Where are you supposed to wipe it off?On your clean sheets?If you do that, then the lube schmear will still be on your sheets later...only it will be all cold and clammy.

Should you wipe it on your partner's back in the clutches of passion?Ew. No.

Locate, pick up and wipe it on your clothes? How romantic.

"Hold on a second you big Muffin of Love, I've just got to deal with my hand."

The Mom's Group woman, reading my mind, claimed this lube wasn't greasy and that it air dried off your hand.

Eureka!

She also mentioned that this particular lube was from EUROPE (and everyone knows that things from Europe are just more refined and like, so totally better.)Well, hot damn!

I was all, "Sign me up for the New Lube of the 21st Century!"

But then I had to face the real dilemma.

How would I actually PROCURE the lube?

My main issue with sex toys, accessories and the like is really one of procurement.

Someone sent me links to two internet sites that sell sex toys (this and this), but I can't look.

It's not that I'm a prude or that I'm not curious.

It's just that I'm afraid of Big Brother.

I can't help imagining some SECRET AGENT out there tracking my IP Address and thinking, "HA HA HA! All Queen of The House of Joy wants for Christmas is a Back Door BuddyTM."

Maybe I DO want a Back Door BuddyTM ... and maybe I DON'T.

The thing is, I don't want anyone to KNOW if I want one or not.It's bad enough that when someone (who is not me) thinks about, um, getting busy... that her immediate next thought is that every one of her dead ancestors going back through time will be looking down on her as she... well, sins or whatever.

If I am she is going to indulge in steamy, hot sin, why do my her great, great, great grandparents have to know about it?

Damned ancestral spying!So if (someone) already has to suffer the DEAD knowing everything about (her) sex life, why should actual LIVING people (other than those actively involved) have to know anything about it?

(...She says, posting all of this to the INTERNET because she is OUT. OF. CONTROL.)

I mean, to procure an item someone has to know about it, like a sales clerk or something.

Except in the historic case of the random, slag benefactress...

When I was in my early twenties, a friend of a friend of my mom's found some convoluted way to invite herself to stay with my roommates and me while she "job hunted" in my town.

I'm here to testify that she didn't do half as much job hunting as she did ... well, on second thought, maybe she was looking for something on her back...

Anyway, she saw more action...As a parting gift she left a fancy gift bag on our dining room table decorated with ribbons and tissue paper.

In it?A big, fat, vibrating item.

My roommates and I stood in a circle around it.What to do, what to do?

Rock, paper, scissors?

You'll just have to ask my spying ancestors what became of it.Fast forward back to the mom's group and the quandary of procuring the lube... I decided there was no way I was going to walk into an establishment with a name like "InsERECTION" or "Big, Swinging Richard's House of Lube."I settled on allowing Big Brother to witness and record my credit card processing a small bottle of el fantastico euro lube from a web site called (something like) "Lube-O-Rama."

Lube-O-Rama sent God's Answer to the Sticky Hand along with about 50 bazillion packets of sample lube with names like "Stroke" and "Wet."K tossed all the sample packets into the universally recognized home for all lube... the nightstand drawer.

Friday, December 01, 2006

The next thing you know I'm going to be one of those girls who happily bares all at Mardi Gras when some awesome dudes yell, "Show us yer..."

However, practical wisdom reassures me that given the absolute state The Girls are in these days, they aren't coming out in public.

Still, if I can't rant about my own boobs here, then where?

I need to start by saying that I am a poor excuse for a woman in the Secrets of Beauty Department.

Clearly, though my best friend required me to subscribe, I did not pay careful enough attention to my Seventeen Magazines because at 39 I still am mostly clueless about creams, powders, and procedures related to womanly beauty and body maintenance.

I strode up to the lingerie counter and told the sales woman that I needed help, that I had no idea what size bra I needed or which kind to buy.

She told me to "look over there" and when I turned in that direction she fell over laughing.

Literally.

She did not try to hide the fact that she was laughing AT me.

Normally I might've been incensed, but examining the situation I realized that she was presented with a 39 year old, saggy boob woman with a flaming, former uni-brow who has just stated with great conviction that she is at a loss for how to buy a bra, presumably an activity she would have mastered around puberty.

Embarrassed, but not giving up, I turned back to her and said, "You can laugh in my face if you're going to laugh, but get up off of your stool and DO SOMETHING TO HELP ME!" (Snap!)

She tried to regain her composure and trundled me into the dressing room where she decided I was now a 32 C.

She tried to tell me that a 34 B would also work, but apparently Oprah Winfrey is debunking this myth on her show. The gurus of bra-fitting now say that the size around your torso is the critical component in the new, post-modern bra world.

This means that I STILL have to make the long, long drive to the specialty bra store and fork over $60-$120 per bra.

Joy.

Poor Rooster Girl and Mayor, what with no college savings and all...

The specialty bra excursion does come with a free feel-up from an overly aggressive lady who was born and raised in Brooklyn.

So I've got that to look forward to, which is nice.

Yesterday I was in one of those moods where I just wanted to solve the problem and I couldn't get all the way to Mutant Bras-R-Us.

I wandered into Ross where the most cheaply made clothes in the world come to die.

I tried on a zillion bras and found one that would at least bid adieu to the Gilligan and Skipper look for the time being.

The bra I purchased was $4, so you can IMAGINE the sheer quality and workmanship on this thing.

Also, it is the shiniest, brightest blue ever.

It reminds me of the shiny, shade of blue you might find on Hallmark Hanukah decorations.

I think I'd better get my two mis-matched Children of Israel and their ill-fitting yarmulke's up to the fancy store soon... or learn some dreydel songs.